


dying breeds

by flibbertygigget



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Parallels, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Season/Series 01, canonical genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27258580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: Three years after the rise of the Empire, a blue box appeared on the dunes of Tatooine.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Kudos: 40





	dying breeds

Three years after the rise of the Empire, a blue box appeared on the dunes of Tatooine. 

Except for a few dewbacks and a small herd of womp rats, its appearance went unremarked upon. The Tuskans ignored it, knowing that whatever fool built a structure aboveground in the planet's heat would not last long in the desert. A Jawa caravan stopped to see if there was anything worth stripping, but they soon determined that it appeared to be made completely from wood. Still, it was strange how the structure seemed to stand resolute, unconcerned with the shifting dunes that caused the residents of Tatooine to prefer stone or clay buildings.

Three days after the blue box arrived, the hermit who had made the dunes his home came across it. Unlike the dewbacks and the womp rats and the Tuskans and the Jawas, he seemed to understand the significance of its appearance. He stared at it for a moment, stroking his prematurely graying beard, and then he approached the box. He held up a fist as though to knock on the door, but the gesture turned almost against his will into gently placing his hand on the outside of the box.

"Why have you come back for me?" he whispered. He could feel what none of the other residents of the dunes could even guess, the strong glow of life that emitted from the core of the box. That glow pulsed brighter, and he knew that the box was answering even if he couldn't understand the language. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” The hermit turned. He didn’t recognize the man before him, not physically. When he’d known him, he’d been a dandy, with a green velvet jacket and silk waistcoat, with flowing shoulder-length hair and a deceptively gentle smile. This man was older, harder, with a leather jacket and cropped-short hair, but there was no mistaking that Force signature. 

It was changed, ravaged by time and harsh experience, but the Doctor remained the most unique light in the Force that Obi-Wan Kenobi had ever encountered. Older than Master Yoda, brighter and more demanding than Anakin, peeling back each layer felt like releasing the event horizon of a black hole. Not that Obi-Wan was being allowed to peel back any layers this time. This new version of his old friend and mentor had shields that rivaled the most accomplished Jedi Master. 

“Don’t you know already?” said the hermit, surprised at the bitterness in his own voice. “Or is the destruction of the Order too insignificant to fall under the gaze of the Time Lords?”

“That doesn’t explain why  _ here _ ,” the Doctor insisted. “You could go anywhere. You could do what you could to help the Rebellion; you could join the Guardians of the Whills and find some measure of peace. It isn’t as if you need to be alone.”

“If you know so much about my options, then you know why they aren’t options at all,” Obi-Wan Kenobi said. “I have my duty, as one of the last of the Jedi.”

“Yes, you’re one of the last Jedi,” the Doctor said, “and I understand what that’s like-” Obi-Wan let out a humorless laugh.

“You? Understand? You can’t possibly understand.”

“I understand better than you might think.”

“My  _ Padawan,  _ the boy I  _ raised _ \- He destroyed everything! My family, my purpose, an Order that lasted for 25,000 years - He  _ slaughtered  _ them, Doctor!” Obi-Wan fell to his knees on the sand. He leaned against the blue wood of the TARDIS, reaching out into the Force as though it could comfort him in spite of its emptiness since the Fall of everything. The TARDIS almost seemed to reach back to him, and it did help a little. “He slaughtered them, and now he’s the face of an Empire that is doing so much worse. And I know - I know I should care for those currently being oppressed, I know I should be doing  _ more _ , but I can’t. I just - I can’t.”

“I understand,” the Doctor said again. Obi-Wan opened his eyes.

“Why are you here, Doctor?” he said, a modicum of his Jedi calm returning to his voice. “Really?” The Doctor shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, rocking back and forth on his long legs as he deliberated with himself.

“I was selfish, I suppose,” he said at last. “I wanted to be around a different sort of loss.” He paused, staring intently at Obi-Wan. “I genocided two species last week. Well, last week for me, relatively speaking. It was all a bit outside the space-time continuum.” Obi-Wan didn’t know what to say.

“Why?” said the Jedi, lacking anything better.

“There was a war,” the Doctor said. “There were so many sides, but in the end it was down to my planet versus the Daleks. I killed them both.” He let out a shuddering breath. “It would be easy to say that the Daleks gave me no choice. And I have no lost love for them, you know. They’re fascists, bred to hate and to destroy anything not like themselves. But they weren’t the ones who forced my hand.” He wasn’t meeting Obi-Wan’s eyes, staring instead at the heat-soaked dunes of Tatooine.

“I had to fight my brother,” Obi-Wan offered. “I left him burning on the shores of Mustafar. I couldn’t - I didn’t have the strength to do what you did, to be merciful.”

“It wasn’t mercy that moved my hand,” the Doctor said. “It was rage.”

“If I were a better Jedi I would lecture you about that.”

“I keep trying to tell myself that I had no choice. I keep trying to tell myself I  _ had _ a choice, that there was a better way and I was too much of an idiot to see it. I don’t know which is worse.”

“I failed Anakin. And it wasn’t - it wasn’t as though I could have changed things with one grand gesture. It was my teachings that failed him.”

“Now that I don’t believe,” said the Doctor.

“Why shouldn’t you?” said Obi-Wan bitterly. “You never approved of the way I lived my life or even of the Jedi Order.”

“I disapproved of a child feeling as though he had to take on the burdens of the universe,” the Doctor corrected, though not unkindly. “You can make of that what you will.”

“I tried my best to be a good Jedi,” said Obi-Wan.

“You were the best sort of Jedi,” said the Doctor. “Come to think of it, I was the best sort of Time Lord, in the end. They certainly would have approved of my arrogance in thinking I knew what strands of time would be best.”

“You said they forced your hand,” Obi-Wan said. The Doctor let out an almost imperceptible sigh. “That doesn’t sound like arrogance, it sounds like desperation.”

“Perhaps,” said the Doctor. He gazed intently across the sand. “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” he muttered. “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

“It sounds as though you gained more than a world,” said the Jedi. “And better to exchange your soul for something you feel worth it than to lose it by degrees to a Darkness you don’t have a hope of stopping.”

“You haven’t lost to the Darkness,” the Doctor said. “Not yet.”

“The galaxy, however, has. If I could go back, strike that blow - I would do it. I would regret it for the rest of my days, but I would do it.” For a long moment the Doctor didn’t respond.

“Is it wrong if I would hesitate?” he said. “My people were going to destroy the universe, they  _ deserved _ to die, but I would still hesitate.” He paused. “I miss them. I miss Gallifrey so damn much. I’m a coward.”

“You’re the only one who can make that judgement,” Obi-Wan said. “I suppose that’s the one advantage of being the last of your kind.”

“Maybe.” Obi-Wan could feel the conversation ending, and he hated it. He hated it with a vehemence and attachment that was the complete opposite of Jedi-like. He had been alone for so long, and losing the TARDIS and the Doctor in the Force would leave it even emptier than before.

“Do you have to go?” he said.

“Eventually.”

“Can you stay? Not - Not for long, just enough that I can-” Can what? Heal? Pretend that the Force wasn’t torn and broken as it had been for the previous three years? Both were impossibilities. “Never mind.” The Doctor sat down on the sand next to him, leaning back against the TARDIS door.

“I can stay,” he said. “For a little while at least.” Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that none of the tears he felt rising up would escape.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No thanks needed,” said the Doctor. “I’m not alone, not with the TARDIS, but this is… nice. She doesn’t understand what it is to be all alone, not really.”

“We’re not alone now,” Obi-Wan said.

“No,” said the Doctor, a faint smile on his lips, “I suppose we aren’t.” 


End file.
